It’s been a decade since the fastest-selling fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom
2 came out, and now the latest installment in the fighting series, Marvel vs.
Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds is about hit shelves. Brought together once again,
you the player will get the opportunity to wield iconic Marvel and Capcom
characters via a game controller and protect both worlds. Forced together,
characters of both worlds must join forces and protect their worlds from the
world-devourer, Galactus, who is threatening to consume one of the worlds thanks
to the joint villainy of Dr. Doom of the Marvel Universe and Albert Wesker of
the Capcom Universe you attempted to steal from the cosmic overlord in an
attempt to attain supremacy over their respective worlds.
In the re-envisioned team fighting game for the new year, gamers will be
exposed to a fighting game where their favorite characters from both the Marvel
and Capcom Universes battle it out to see who can fight Galactus in a living
comic book art style powered by Capcom’s MT Framework, an advanced version of
the graphics engine used for Resident Evil 5. This week LatinTRENDS magazine was
given an exclusive demo and interview with gamer extraordinaire and special
consultant for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Seth Killian who gave us an insight in the
ultimate fighting game, Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
LatinTRENDS: The Marvel vs. Capcom games have an amazing roster of characters.
What was the selection process like coming up with the roster for Marvel vs.
Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds?
Seth Killian: The basic approach to this was, “Who does Marvel want to see,” and
“Who does Capcom want to see.” So obviously that’s the starting point. And then
the third point that was brought to the table was “Fan input.” We heard for over
ten years who people really wanted to see. So Dante (Devil May Cry) and Deadpool
(Marvel) were sort of at the top of the list of who fans wanted to see. They
were two of the early characters that we plotted on and chose. You know,
Deadpool at Marvel has become a popular character with fans and fans really
wanted to see Deadpool. So there are a bunch of characters like that, Viewtiful
Joe is definitely up there as well. The Sentinel is obviously not a huge star in
the Marvel universe but Capcom really likes him and the fans really liked him
from MvC 2 so we wanted to bring him back in a brand new way. So, it’s sort of a
mix of those three things and then the other deciding factor is.
It’s easier to get a sense, especially in the Marvel universe, of lot of
guys who are basically strong and psych each other out and while they might have
a great story, like the Black Panther was someone we were thinking about for
awhile, ends up being sort of similar to a lot of the other characters in terms
of game play. So one of our other emphases was not just having interesting
characters that fans of Marvel or Capcom wanted but also making sure that the
characters play different. We didn’t want characters to play the same, that’s
one of the things we were trying to do. You know you can talk about Ken and Ryu
from Street Fighter and be like “Well, Ken is a slightly faster version of Ryu,”
but it’s basically the same thing. We didn’t want anybody in this game who was
basically like a whatever version of whatever. We wanted them all to be
radically different.
LT: With the Xbox 360 & Playstation 3, downloadable content has become very
popular since games can be constantly updated with new content. Will MvC 3 do
the same by providing gamers with new characters and available content in the
near future?
SK: That’s what we’re talking about internally right now. So we’ve done that,
we’ve put our toe into that water a little bit already. We got Jill Valentine
from Resident Evil but she’s in sort of her movie incarnation in MvC 3. Jill is
literally brand new from her incarnation in MvC 2. And we Shuma-Gorath who’s a
super-obscure Marvel character from the Chaos dimension. Marvel Comics always
makes fun of us by saying, “You’ve done more with Shuma-Gorath than we ever
did,” but for whatever reason the Japanese really like Shuma-Gorath. I think
it’s because he’s got a really distinctive look, imagine if you never grew up
with any of these characters and you look at them and you’re like, “Ok, he’s a
dude in tights and hat, here’s another dude in tights and a hat, ok whatever,”
but you can’t say that about Shuma-Gorath because he’s like a giant eyeball with
octopus tentacles it’s that distinctive look that attracts the players to the
characters and their stories.
LT: I’ve noticed about Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (MvC 3) is its elaborate and detailed
storyline for the latest installment in the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise?
SK: Comic Book Writer, Frank Tieri worked on the storyline. My favorite work of
his was when he worked on Punisher, and Frank did a bunch of the writing,
script, and plot for the game that you’re going to be able to enjoy. That’s what
keeps it primarily fresh. It’s has the story element that MvC 2 was missing, and
we’ve got a story for every character in the game and a overall story about why
they are all coming together.
We got a lot of sort of comic book presentation touches, the style of the
game is going back to the early 90s dark inky kind of look. The game is played
as if you’re reading a graphic novel, it moves like you are turning the page as
you play. The alternative costumes are based on costumes seen in graphic novels,
there was a time where the Punisher was going around wearing a suit similar to
Captain America’s and in the game one of the costumes Captain America can wear
is similar to a Punisher look.
LT: So the game doesn’t just cater to gamers but also has something for comic
book lovers?
SK: Oh yes, there’s a lot of love for the comic fans in the game. There’s no
bigger comic nerd than Chris Baker who does all the approval for Marvel games.
He’s been absolutely great giving us all little touches like that (costumes and
details). So there’s stuff in the game from comic printed back in the 90s,
comics from today, and some things that are going to be coming out. There’s
stuff about Marvel comics that you can learn simply by playing the game. I have.
LT: Early you mentioned Marvel vs. Capcom 3 techniques, what techniques are
those exactly?
SK: Basically all the techniques are the same from the other two games in the
series, but one of the things we’ve added is air tag where you can tag your
teammates in the air now which makes it more of free flowing experience between
all the team members. But the big one is probably what we call X-Factor, and
it’s an ability you can activate once per match which any character can do it
and you hit all four attack buttons. Basically you immediately cancel whatever
you were doing and you go into a power-up mode where you are faster, stronger,
and heal up a little bit of life. It’s extremely powerful and you’ll definitely
want to use it. But the trick with it is it gets more powerful the longer you
wait. So if you have all three of your team members in its still good and it’s a
really powerful technique, but if you wait until one dies so you have two guys
left then it becomes, lasts basically, twice as long and becomes twice as
powerful. And if you wait until you’re all by yourself to activate it, you’re
three times as powerful. Those are rough approximations, it’s not exact, but
it’s much longer and makes you much more powerful.
The other problem we had with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, I mean everybody loved it
and it was the fastest selling game, so we rereleased it ten years after it came
out on Xbox Live and the Playstation Network and it was still the fastest
selling game of all time. So people were still nuts for it even ten years after
its release, but one of the little problems we noticed with MvC 2 was people got
so good at it that sometimes you could kill (your opponents) like right as soon
as the match starts. Let’s say I call an assist and try to attack you, and you
bust out into a Super, you could kill my assist maybe and my main character like
really fast, right, so then I’m down to one character just like that. So in
those situations when you have three characters and I’m down to one, I have
almost no way to come back. That’s not a bad thing, but with X-Factor you make
every character dangerous and with the last guy activating it you can kill one
guy evening out the playing field.
LT: So what will fans appreciate and love about the latest installment, Marvel
vs. Capcom 3: Fate of two worlds?
SK: I think overall it’s got a real sense of freedom. So if you ever played a
fighting game and felt a little intimidated, like if you’re playing Street
Fighter and you’re doing it wrong…you know you’re doing it wrong. It doesn’t
look cool, and you sort of look…sighs. In MvC 3 there’s a great sense of freedom
where you can just mess around and set the controls to automatically hit supers
in a mode called “Simple Mode.” In “Simple Mode” you can select four super or
hyper combos and just play with them until you can learn as play, you won’t win
a tournament in the mode but you can develop a basic strategy for the game
itself.
Players are given a freedom to learn how to play the game if they never
played a fighting game before, you can learn the combos, and about the
characters as you play. This is a game that’s really an interesting game to jump
into. Beyond that it’s filled with characters, especially from Marvel, that have
never looked better in other games. So there are reasons to pick up Marvel vs.
Capcom 3 both as a fighting game fan and as a comic book fan. And, it’s never
been easier to get into a fighting game so if you gotta pick one give this one a
shot. You can take my word on it or you can take his word on it…
During the interview with Killian, a gamer named Guillermo Diaz had been
testing the game out and from his vocal outburst of excitement and exhilaration
Killian appears to right on MvC 3 being the game to pick. After talking with
Killian, I was able to get Diaz’s impression of the game which he describes as
being, “hands down very fun, and major improvement from the others. The combos
are epic in this game…The cooperation between your characters is key. Knowing
how to bring people out to help out is super important in winning battles
(3-on-3 Tag Team feature). If you can master chaining assist combos, you will do
very well in this game.” When asking him if he would recommend the game his
response was simply, “Epic game. When it comes out, go buy it, rent it,
whatever. And hello, Phoenix, nuff said!”
Seems that a decade of waiting was worth it! The ultimate fighting game,
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hits shelves this
February 15th so expect to see long lines at local retail stores as the day
slowly approaches.
